“My first day on the air, I got a phone call from him wishing me luck,” recalls the former WKYC-TV3 staff meteorologist. “He saw me as no threat whatsoever.”

Her name was Amy Hasten in 1992, and she’d already worked in a major market before Cleveland. Still, she seemed fresh and approachable, making her one of the station’s viewer favorites. She left Cleveland in 1998 then took broadcast jobs in Miami, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Murphy served on the weekend weather team at Fox 11 in Los Angeles and covered breaking news as a weekday general assignment reporter. She earned an Emmy for her work in Los Angeles and received two Emmy nominations for her coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Los Angeles also brought tragedy for Murphy in March of 2007 when her boyfriend, comedian Richard Jeni, committed suicide while suffering severe clinical depression.

She remained at Fox 11 until this October, when she took a job as director of corporate communications for PacifiCord. She’s passionate about the company’s efforts to collect and bank umbilical cord stem cells of newborns.

“It’s not controversial because it’s non-embryonic, and the stem cells can be used to treat cerebral palsy, blindness and other conditions,” she says. Murphy’s new job has kept her in West Hollywood, where she can’t entirely escape the celebrity-driven reality of Los Angeles.

“Just the other day I saw George Hamilton,” she reports. “And my dog growled at Suge Knight at the car wash.”